Aachen Cathedral

Charlemagne’s octagonal palace chapel and its treasury (Schatzkammer), in the centre of Aachen.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Neither Here Nor There	Bill Bryson	subject	The reason Bryson goes to Aachen, and a small, dark cathedral that outshines Cologne’s.

Neither Here Nor There — Bill Bryson (1991)

Source: Readwise highlight

Next door was the octagonal cathedral, modeled on the church of San Vitale at Ravenna, and all that remains of a palace complex mostly destroyed during the Second World War.

• Role: subject
• In the book: Chapter 7 opens with Bryson taking the train from Liège because he “had always wanted to see Aachen Cathedral”. In the cathedral close he first visits the Schatzkammer, “the finest assortment of reliquaries I ever expect to see”, including the golden bust of Charlemagne and a sixteenth-century triptych of Pope Gregory’s Mass. Then he goes into the cathedral itself: small and dark but exquisite, with its domed roof, striped marble and rich stained glass.
• Why it matters: It’s the high point of the Aachen-and-Cologne chapter and the yardstick for what follows: a day later Cologne’s far bigger cathedral, marooned on a concrete plaza, leaves him cold. Set elsewhere, the chapter would lose its small-beats-big contrast.